By KIM BOLAN, Vancouver Sun July 12, 2011

Federal prosecutors have dropped all charges laid last fall in a high-profile international drug case in which more than $9 million worth of cocaine was smuggled from Mexico.

The Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP’s Federal Drug Enforcement Branch showed off their massive cocaine and methamphetamine seizure at a news conference in October, announcing charges against two Vancouver men and a Mexican.

They claimed Vancouver businessman Francisco Javier Gomez, local resident Jason Quinn Lawrence and Eduardo Gonzalez, of Mexico, smuggled 275 kilos of drugs, packed in limestone flooring and garden fountains, in seven shipping containers through Port Metro Vancouver.

But late last month, all charges against all three were stayed.

The Vancouver Sun obtained a copy of the letter sent by associate chief federal prosecutor Martha Devlin to lawyers for the former suspects June 20, saying she had sent a letter to the “Criminal Registry directing a stay of proceedings on all counts on information 202377-C2 with respect to your clients.”

There is no explanation provided as to why the charges were stayed.

Devlin declined to comment on the stays when contacted by The Sun.

RCMP Chief Supt. Brian Cantera said it was the decision of the Crown, in consultation with police, to stay the charges.

“It takes a high degree of evidence to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. If the evidence doesn’t support that bar that needs to be reached, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada makes the decision to enter a stay as they did in this case,” Cantera said.

Lawyer Danny Markovitz, who represents Gomez, said his client was a respected broker who simply facilitated an international shipment and had no contact with the goods – nor knowledge of the cocaine — when it got to Canada.

And Gomez, 52, said he is relieved the ordeal is over.

“Actually they ruined my life,” he said of police. “It was terrible. I am just a broker doing my job. I don’t know why they were so harsh against me in the beginning.”

As a broker, Gomez said he facilitated imports by arranging shipments and doing all paperwork for the companies on either end of the transaction.

Who packed the drugs in the shipment at the Mexican end remains a mystery to him, Gomez said.

“Every single day there are thousands of transactions and thousands of people like me making the paperwork and you don’t know nothing about what’s inside. You never touch the container. You never have the possession of nothing. It is just the paper you receive,” he said.

Gomez said the 35 days he spent in pre-trial jail was traumatic.

“I never even had a speeding ticket and then you are inside with criminals and killers and that is scary,” he said. “All the stress and all the damage that this kind of thing makes to your family and you is terrible, just terrible.”

When he got out, he closed his company as police had seized his computer and other equipment and he worried that no one would want to work with him anyway because of the charges.

He is now working for another firm promoting Canadian products abroad, but still has not received his passport back, so can’t travel.

Through it all, he said he never lost hope he would be cleared.

“I am a proud Canadian and I trust in the Canadian law and in the institutions,” Gomez said. “I was 100-per-cent sure everything would become clear.”

kbolan@vancouversun.com